Tuesday, August 26, 2008

YouTube on Tuesday removed video clip posted by a group of Rhodes high school students showing a teenager urinating on a memorial to Holocaust victims on the Greek island.

The clip showed the memorial, a black pillar which commemorates the murders of 1,604 Jews killed by the Nazis in Rhodes during World War II. The video then showed a youth - his face obscured by an Israeli flag covered by the international "no" symbol of a red circle with a slash through it - urinating on the pillar.

"We are a secret group of students of the 'Venetoklio' High School of Rhodes, that does not digg [sic] at all the Jews who wish to turn the island [of Rhodes] into a second 'Land of Canaan.'" says an accompanying "manifesto."

"After all the propaganda fed even in Religion school books, over the 'chosen people' and other bullshit, we have decided to take the situation into our own hands and show to everyone with deeds of how much do we really agree with this view."

The clip also included rock music with lyrics threatening Rhodes Jews, praising Nazi leader Adolf Hitler and the Auschwitz death camp, and a refrain using the German term "Juden raus!" [Jews, get out!]

According to the Israeli nrg news Website, the memorial was built in 2002 near a synagogue in a section of Rhodes once known as "Little Jerusalem."

Although the Rhodes Jewish community once numbered some 6,000 people before the war, the Holocaust and ensuing emigration left only a tiny Jewish population, estimated to be as small as 40 resident Jews at present.